


How you Feeling?

by NewAgeVintage



Category: The Venture Bros
Genre: Addiction, Animal Death, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, animal testing, discussion of Rusty’s childhood and Jonas being awful, its pretty canon typical when it comes to lab animal treatment, rusty spirals back into pill popping, slightly nsfw at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 16:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16066685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NewAgeVintage/pseuds/NewAgeVintage
Summary: Taking place in a vague place in season 6/7.Rusty loses his secret stash of ‘emergency’ pills when he loses the compound. Thankfully money can buy dubiously prescribed medication. After a frustrating night in the lab he breaks into his stash and Brock needs to step in.





	How you Feeling?

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to ‘How You Doing?’ by Superfruit like 400 times while working on this. Ends a lot sappier than the beginning suggests. 
> 
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7r9ge6VDERQ

Drugs were a large part in Doctor Venture’s life, even as a child. By age 13 his father prescribed him Ambien to help him sleep through the nightmares he suffered from. By 15 he was being given Xanax to control the panic attacks. At 17 he relied heavily on an antidepressant. Medication was obviously perfectly fine when prescribed by a medical doctor, however Jonas was not a licensed psychiatrist and was not very observant of side effects. Some memories became twisted by hallucinations and others were blocked completely. 

When he left home for college Rusty stopped taking his multiple medications on schedule, and once his father died so did his prescriptions. He was left blindingly aware of everything around him and racked with insomnia. Thankfully as a young adult with most of his friends still being enrolled in college it was easy to find less controlled replacements. Weed and cocaine became regular occurrences, much to the dismay of his first body-guard, Myra.

The boys were born and the switch from street drugs to dubiously prescribed amphetamines was made. It wasn’t necessarily a good change, but it made him feel more responsible. 

When Brock took the position as his body-guard he kept liquor in the house. He drank more frequently than Rusty did and the habit caught on. The slow ween off of the pills started and a taste for mixed drinks emerged. Of course he could never truly separate himself from uppers. Pill bottles were hidden throughout the complex, ‘in case of emergency’.

Brock was aware of his employers emergency stash, but didn’t harp on the matter. Having hidden pills was a step up from carrying around bottles with him. When the complex burnt down it didn’t occur to him that those tucked away bottles burnt down with it. Rusty realized this fact immediately. 

New found inheritance was put to work rebuilding his stash. Three prescribed bottles of Dexedrine appeared in the master suites bathroom cabinet. A bottle of Adderal was kept in the first drawer of the nightstand along with two bottles of Evekeo.

Disaster was brewing and the only remaining ingredient was a catalyst. Unfortunately for the Venture family that was easy to obtain.

-

It was 1am and Rusty was in the lab. He had been there for well over 10 hours, toiling over some sort of gadget. The item was designed to be a portable sound proof barrier. It was a fantastic concept, plenty of daily and military applications. However it was currently just a mess of electronics.

For the third time in an hour Rusty burnt himself on the soldering iron. His hands were already bandaged in several places and he had been yawning on and off for hours. To stubborn to leave his work and to tired to create anything of a decent caliber an idea pops into his mind. Amphetamines. 

Of course it’s a fantastic idea! Who could turn down extra energy and focus? Rusty takes the elevator to the penthouse, already jittery at the thought. He moves quietly to his room and opens the nightstand. He pops two pills and goes to put the bottle back. Immediately after closing the drawer he opens it again and pockets a bottle.

By the time he’s seated himself back at his work bench he feels better. The first effects of the tablets has barely started to kick in but it’s a familiar and comforting sensation. He resumes his work and loses track of time.

Brock finds him on his 6am rounds. Rusty is lightly shaking and setting up some sort of equipment on top of a speaker in the middle of the lab. He doesn’t interrupt immediately, just watches Rusty fumble with a remote. When he finally presses the right sequence of buttons a blue semi-transparent dome buzzes to life around the speaker and the music it was playing is gone. 

“HA! Take that super scientist monthly!” Rusty deactivates the field and the music resumes. He’s muttering something to himself but Brock can’t hear it over the unnecessarily loud ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ echoing through the lab. 

“Hey, uh... Doc?” Rusty turns around to quickly and almost trips over his own feet when he realizes he isn’t alone. Brock can recognize the signs of what’s going on but decides to feign ignorance, “you’re up early.”

“Well you know what they say! Super science never sleeps! So why should the super-scientist?” He laughs and sits down in a desk chair, “this little gadget of mine is going to help get Venture Industries back into the big time!” The bags under his eyes are obvious even across the room and the he’s talking fast.

Brock approaches him and pulls a chair up next to his. He discretely eyes Rusty up and down. There’s a slight tremor in his hands, and he’s running his tongue over his gums, trying to fight dry mouth. Rusty starts rambling about the details of his invention and the possible uses, oblivious to the fact that Brock isn’t paying attention to what he’s saying. 

After humoring Rusty’s ranting for a few minutes Brock interrupts. “Ya know Doc, I don’t think I’ve seen you this productive in a while,” he’s thinking specifically of the last time Rusty went on a bender and developed his force field generator, “makes me wonder what you're using as, uh, motivation.”

It was a very pointed question, but in times like this Rusty was even worse at picking up on subtlety than usual, and Brock had never been much of a wordsmith. Rusty sets down his invention and his face falls, “Are you accusing me of something Brock?”

“Of course not,” he absolutely was, “I’m just worried.”

“I’m a super scientist, I invent, it’s what I do.” 

“I know.”

“Well then maybe you should let the genius get back to work.” With that Rusty went back to tinkering with the remote, jotting down sloppy notes as he looked over the hardware. 

Brock stood to leave, only pausing briefly to look over his shoulder and tell Rusty “At least drink some fucking water, and try to sleep at some point.” He didn’t give Rusty the opportunity to respond before walking into the elevator to continue his rounds.

-

When Brock does his noon rounds Rusty is still in the lab. He’s been joined by Pete and Billy who seem giving him a wide berth. Rusty is frantically writing out observations and sketching diagrams while Pete and Billy are setting up a test involving the sound blocker and live rats. A quick glance around the room reveals an enclosure of rats that didn’t seem to survive previous testing.

When Billy notices Brock he hurries over to him, “Brock thank God! I don’t know what Rusty is hopped up on, but he’s being a complete bastard!” He looks exhausted and has, presumably, rat blood on his lab coat. “We’ve been killing rats for like, two fucking hours. This thing,” he wildly gestures towards the sound barrier, “needs like way more work before we should be testing it on anything living but he just keeps shouting ‘Run the test again! I think I have it this time’ after fiddling with the remote for like three seconds.” His impression of Rusty is surprisingly good and almost makes Brock chuckle. 

Pete finishes up with his task and approaches Brock as well, “Man, Rust has been popping pills like they’re damn tic tacs since we got here.” Billy gives him a pointed look, “I mean, I’m not one to judge, but he needs to slow down.”

Pete and Billy start arguing amongst each other before Brock can respond to either of them. He walks away from their fight and towards Rusty who looks even more worse for the wear than he did 6 hours ago. “Hey Doc.”

Rusty looks up from his work, “what is is Brock? I’m busy.” He’s obviously extremely irritated and barely keeping it together. Brock doesn’t respond, instead he positions himself in Rusty’s personal space, a hand resting on the work table on either side of him. Rusty goes red at the closeness. “Oh, ha, well hi Brock.” 

“Hi Rust”, Rusty sputters at the use of a name other than ‘Doc’ coming from Brock. A large hand pushes against his chest and he’s trapped against the counter. Pete and Billy have gone quiet, watching the interaction. 

“Brock! Maybe this isn’t the time for this? You know, important science work. The fact that there’s other people here.” His voice is shrill and panicked and he laughs nervously as Brock leans in closer.

Brock reaches his hand into his lab coat and grabs the half empty prescription bottle from the inner pocket before pulling away.

“Son of a Bitch! Are you fucking serious? Brock? Give those back immediately!” Brock pockets the bottle and walks back towards the elevator. Rusty follows him, yelling and embarrassed. Pete snickers and Billy looks flabbergasted. 

“Oh so now you’re just going to ignore me? Is that how this is going to go Brock? Fine walk away it’s not like I don’t have mo-“ he’s cut off when Brock suddenly turns back around and Rusty walks right into his chest.

“You don’t have more Doc.” He pulls three empty prescription bottles from his jacket pocket, “Made sure of that. You’ll start coming down in like two hours. Drink some water.” Rusty starts screaming at him, talking about how he’s fired, that he’s betrayed him. The same crap he yells every time Brock does something he doesn’t agree with. 

Brock lights a cigarette and presses the button to call an elevator, “you should come up stairs Doc. Pete, Billy, stop killing rats.” Pete and Billy both straighten up and look sheepish as they hurry to put away the lab animals. 

Rusty tires himself of screaming, sighs, and gets into the elevator with his body-guard. 

The short ride upstairs is quiet. When they reach the penthouse Rusty simply states, “I’m not happy.”

“I know Doc.”

Brock ushers him up to his bedroom after retrieving a bottle of water from the kitchen and forcing it into Rusty’s hands. They enter the master bedroom and Rusty sits on the edge of the bed. Brock sits next to him and turns on the TV. They stay there silently for a few moments before Rusty lays down, resting his head in Brock’s lap.

He cries. It starts subtly, tears welling at the corner of his eyes but turns into full-blown sobbing when Brock places a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I just wanted one idea to work out.”

“It was a good idea”

Rusty curls up and leans into the hand rubbing circles into his shoulder, “It was a great idea... a great idea that gives rats stage four cancer within minutes of exposure.” Brock grimaces, but doesn’t say anything. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have known it wouldn’t work. Nothing ever works.” 

They stay this way for over an hour before Rusty starts to yawn and rub at his eyes. “You’re tired Doc, you should try to sleep.”

“You called me ‘Rust’ in the lab.”

“I did.”

“It was so out of left field. And you practically pinned me to the desk.”

“Yup.”

“It was just to get that bottle away from me, wasn’t it.”

“Yeah, It was”

“But it was nice... damn it.” Rusty starts to tear up again. “Damn it Brock. Am I really that easy to read?”

“Like a book.”

After a beat of silence Rusty sits up and turns away. Brock’s presence has gone from comforting to embarrassing. This wasn’t the first time Brock has used that tactic to get Rusty to comply, and it wasn’t the most extreme measure he’s gone to do it. 

“I don’t know why you humor me.” Rusty lies back on the bed, glaring at the ceiling through tears, “it’s always so promising in the moment, but it’s always so fake.”

Brock lights a cigarette, just to get a reaction. After a moment Rusty gestures for him to hand it over. Brock expects him to put it out or get up and toss it out the window, instead he takes a drag off of it. Brock lights another cigarette. Rusty ashes his onto the floor before taking another drag. “This isn’t how I expected things to work out, strung out and smoking a cigarette in an ill gained pent house.”

“This isn’t what I planned on either.” Brock lays down as well and they both avoid eye contact. “You know that I actually do care about you and the boys, right?”

“Of course you do. Just...” Rusty clears his throat, uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation, “just not the way I want you too.”

“You don’t know that Rust.” Brock rolls over and pins ‘Rust’ to the bed in the same way he pinned him to the table in the lab. “Hunter gave me the option of not taking this assignment again.” He leans in closer, “I came back because I wanted too.” Rusty tries to squirm, but is locked into place by pure muscle. “We’re getting old. Too old to keep up this bullshit cat and mouse game we’ve been playing at for years.”

Brock leans in, kissing the man he’s protected for two decades. He’s gentle at first, until Rusty moans against his lips. Forceful and rough he pushes him further into the mattress. Rusty grinds up into the pressure of Brock’s thigh between his legs. When their lips are free he sighs, “Jesus, Brock, if you’re just using this against me again please don’t tell me.” A muscled thigh rubs against his groin, “Mmm, do that again.”

Rusty manages to fall asleep, exhausted when Brock is through with him. He asks Brock about it the next day, wondering if it was just another ruse to get him to sleep off the drugs. Brock simply responds with, “Of course not, Rust.”


End file.
